Dessert storm: the phantom flan flingers answer their critics

I read Tim Dowling's column (Why pie-flingers no longer hit the spot, September 20) and I'm afraid Mr Dowling and I do not see eye to eye on the subject. For example, a whole rash of politically important pie-ing has taken place in the States. Folks such as leading neo-conservatives Pat Buchanan and (ex-leftist) David Horowitz, and rightwing political firebrand Ann Coulter have all received their just desserts as a form of people's justice in recent months.

What Mr Dowling doesn't comprehend is that a political pie-ing is comparable to an assassination without a bullet. Furthermore, my quest for being a defender of justice is fuelled by the fact that I am a child of Holocaust survivors who grew up during the era that spawned Martin Luther King.

We all know that pie-ing has a part in mass culture - everybody knows somebody who deserves a pie. It can be a landlord, an ex-lover or an employer who is a likely candidate for a pie in the face. In fact, some Catholic schoolgirls hired me to pie a nun back in the 70s. That was one pie-for-hire that resulted in fun and games afterwards ... Anyway, study the movies of the Marx brothers and the Three Stooges to brush up on the history of pie-ing. In fact, AJ Weberman is in the middle of writing a book about my role as the founder of the school of political pie throwing.

Once upon a time, a phrase I infinitely prefer to "back then", I wrote that building a gymnasium on the site of the Kent State killings was like paving the Alamo for a parking lot - only to discover they had paved most of the Alamo grounds for a parking lot a long time ago. Sic semper Mr Dowling's punchline: "Soon we'll all be doing it for charity." To demonstrate my harmless intent when pie-ing Ohio governor James "Big Gym" Rhodes, who dispatched the National Guard to Kent, I had myself deluged with 26 pies on the State House grounds and claimed a world record. Next thing I knew, the Red Cross was pie-ing volunteer celebrities once a year at the State House. Not that I want a cut, or anything.

It was kind of the writer to remember that it was "the American Yippies who developed the art of food-flinging as a post-infantile protest form". When we brought Rock Against Racism to America in the 70s, we always scrupulously credited the concept as a British import. Inevitably, however, one loses control of one's intellectual property. Credit where it's due. I tell all my friends: "Don't say the US is in Iraq to steal their oil. We're there to sell the British clean-up technology after we help them steal Iraq's oil. We'll be stealing our oil from Venezuela, thank you very much."

Everything else Mr Dowling wrote is entirely true and you should give him a raise. Steven Conliff Columbus, Ohio, USAwww.stevenconliff.com